DDS-4 Tape Drive

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, dev wrote:

> Hello
> 
> I am attempting to get a file server up and running for a non-profit org. We 
> chose Fedora because of the 2.6 kernel (for Serial ATA support).
>
> We have an internal HP DDS-4 Scsi Tape drive. I have no experience with SCSI 
> and don't know where to start to get this device to function. 

assuming your scsi controller is detected... the st modules should be
loaded by the kernel.

> Can someone 
> please help me with the basics of where to look to troubleshoot, what kind of 
> modules I might need to load etc. I can find very little through google when 
> searching for info about this device with Linux.
> 
> Any basic pointers as to where to start would be great.

if you do a dmesg |less then you should seems something like this

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
        <Adaptec aic7895 Ultra SCSI adapter>
        aic7895C: Ultra Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
                                                                                
scsi1 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
        <Adaptec aic7895 Ultra SCSI adapter>
        aic7895C: Ultra Wide Channel B, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
                                                                                
blk: queue df5e1c14, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
(scsi0:A:4): 10.000MB/s transfers (10.000MHz, offset 15)
  Vendor: HP        Model: C1537A            Rev: L610
  Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI SCSI revision: 02

then a bit later something like:

st: Version 20030406, bufsize 32768, max init. bufs 4, s/g segs 16
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0

if you see that it's all good.

then you can do:

[root at acad-backup etc]# mt -f /dev/st0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (50000):
 DR_OPEN IM_REP_EN

and it should report the current state of the drive. 

then it's more a question of deciding what and how to backup which is a 
seperate issue.

> thanks
> 
> Cyril
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu    
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